Eight years ago, you could count the Trump-supporting house members on one hand. Four years ago, half supported him publicly and a handful were willing to engage in a coup to support him.
And now we’re supposed to take it as a sign the GOP is independent that there are only 38 left who are willing to barely disagree with him, while the rest are willing to shut down the government based on a political whim while he’s not yet even in office?
This is a sensible take only if you have amnesia.
Big 2016 “Trump is finally behaving presidential” vibes.
I feel pretty unconvinced after years of them sucking him off 24/7
Not that they won’t largely follow him, but they are not in lockstep clearly and he needs everyone to agree. He’s going to be working with a 3 seat majority in the house with it being temporarily a one seat majority for a couple of months based on the people they are planning to pull
If he can lose 38 here after he publicly backed a bill, he can lose 3 on other bills
Until January.
When they have even fewer seats. They actually lost a house seat this last election. They’ll have just three seat majority - and a one seat majority for some of it too because they plan to pull people from the house
Trump also threatened to primary anyone who voted for a bill without raising the debt ceiling. 170 republicans voted for a funding bill without a debt ceiling increase. He’s managed to weaken his future threats because he doesn’t seem likely to primary that many
On the senate side, he’s already had to pull Gatez because they didn’t have the senate votes for it. They’re not in lockstep about everything
Don’t get me wrong, they’ll probably still get plenty of terrible stuff through, but they are not all in agreement about everything and there are still plenty of winnable fights here. They had larger house majorities after 2016